Kill Chain

by Meg Gardiner

  P.J.’s eyes narrowed. “How does he do shit like that?”

  I put two fingers to my teeth and whistled. He saw me. When the light changed, he pulled to the curb.

  The man in the passenger seat got out and held the door for me. He wore a soccer team shirt and paint-stained Adidas sweatpants. “Would you be Evan?”

  “You bet.”

  “Is your man always so bloody-minded?” He smiled, leaned back inside the car, and shook Jesse’s hand. “Be safe. You wouldn’t exactly pass a road safety check.”

  “You want me to ship any of this gear back when I’m done?” Jesse said.

  The young man laughed and shook his head. They were talking about the sawed-off dowels bound to the pedals with duct tape.

  “Mind, don’t go smashing through the front of any shops. I find out you used a DB9 as a ram raider, I’ll be cheesed off.”

  “Not this car,” Jesse said. “Thanks, man.”

  “Pleasure, mate.”

  The young man straightened, looking at me. “I was working at the building site up the road from the embassy and couldn’t let that bastard get away with pounding on a fellow who’s, you know . . .” He glanced at the car. “But turns out Jesse put paid to him. I just rode along till he was sure he had the driving sussed.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Cheers.”

  He smiled, stuck his hands in his pockets, and strolled away. We jumped in the car, P.J. and Georgie piling into the tiny backseat. I shook my head at Jesse. His lip was busted and he had a scrape on his forehead. He stared back, eyes cool.

  “Where we heading?” he said.

  “Georgie?” I said. “Your mom told me you know the address.”

  “Wakefield House, Berkeley Walk,” she said. “Like the place she went to university.”

  I got the map. “And this car would belong to whom, exactly? The Avengers?”

  “Christian Sanger. Check the glove compartment; the car rental agreement has his contact information.” He cut his eyes at me. “And a medical certificate from his doctor at home that he was using like a disabled sticker.”

  “How . . .” I began, and put up a hand. “Never mind.”

  “Keys,” he said. “I got them from his pocket. The key chain had the make and license number on it. I found this parked near the building that was on fire.”

  Georgie leaned between the seats. “Are we going to Mum’s solicitors?”

  “No.” His tone told me that something had gone very wrong at Goodhew Waites. “The solicitors won’t be able to help.”

  “Oh.” She glanced back and forth between us. “Then you will, right?”

  “You got it.” He shoved the car into gear. “Ev, how long do you have?”

  “Floor it,” I said.

  31

  We cut around the corner onto Berkeley Walk with the Aston’s engine growling. Jesse braked with typical alacrity. The duct-tape method of London driving was pretty raw, but no wilder than the rest of the traffic, and unlike P.J. he hadn’t hit anybody. Something told me he was keeping score on that track. He pulled to the curb in front of Wakefield House.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s a bank.”

  P.J. looked out the window. “What does a double yellow line mean?”

  Jesse opened his door. “Valet parking. Come on.”

  Wakefield House was a solid piggy bank of a building, with Ionic columns and enough marble on the facade to rebuild the Acropolis. For all I knew, the facade actually was the Acropolis. Inside the austere lobby I gestured P.J. and Georgie to a couple of leather chairs, and nodded at Jesse.

  “You come with me.”

  The sylph behind the desk wore a tight, fetching black cassock and radiated the scent of Chanel and cigarettes. Her manner was smoother than glass.

  “Your name, madam?”

  “Kit Larkin.”

  I handed her my passport and the key Jax had given to me. I kept hold of the Aston’s car-hire agreement and Christian’s medical certificate.

  She glanced at the passport, typed on a tablet computer, and made a phone call.

  “A bank officer will meet you downstairs,” she said.

  We headed to the lift. When the door closed, Jesse gave me a cool appraisal.

  “Brunette looks good on you.” His gaze slid down my body. “Didn’t know you could wear clothes like that. Jax dress you?”

  I watched the floor numbers above the door, going down. “Did you tell the FBI that I changed my appearance? Before you took up boosting cars, I mean.”

  “No. I haven’t told anybody you’re here, aside from P.J.”

  What was that, an admission that he’d been wrong? My heart felt as though it were working overtime pumping whatever substance ran through my veins: ice, acid, sand. I stared hard at the numbers.

  “Did Dad send you on this quest?” I said.

  “I thought you knew that.”

  Now I looked at him. “To keep the truth hidden? To keep me and everybody else from knowing about his guilt?”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “Don’t.” I shook my head. “I know you came in part to help Georgie. That means an incredible amount. And I know Dad swore you to confidentiality because he didn’t want any of this to come to light. But if he was trying to protect his family, it was a sham.” I glanced at him. “Did you know the truth?”

  His gaze was both opaque and incisive. “Yes.”

  Whatever else he knew, he was holding back. I wanted to drop him to the floor and throttle him. Or rip his shirt off and jump him. I looked away but still felt his gaze on me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Kit Larkin?”

  “Jax’s idea. You hate it?”

  “I think Kit Larkin is hot.”

  I scrunched my mouth and shook my head.

  “Too bad for me she’s engaged.” The lift decelerated to a stop. “At least, I think she is. She’s wearing a ring.”

  The door opened. We walked out into a subbasement that had cool marble walls and thick carpet. Standing directly ahead, chubby hands clasped, was the bank officer. Her ankles, luckily, were sturdy enough to support the swathes of red tartan that comprised her suit.

  “Please follow me,” she said.

  She led us down a long hall to the vault. I gave her the key. She retrieved the box and showed us to a private room.

  When she opened the door, recognition clicked. I saw the polished desk, the mahogany paneling, the sconces on the walls. This was where Jax had recorded her videos.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Closing the door behind us, I began searching the room. I scanned the ceiling. I ran my hands over the sconces on the walls, under the table, and along the seams of the polished wood.

  “What are you doing?” Jesse said.

  I checked the potted ficus in the corner and looked under the desk chair.

  “This fiasco has been made possible by the fact that everybody involved recorded what they did, usually on hidden cameras.” I glanced around one more time. “Wish I had a bug detector, but this’ll have to do.”

  He eyed me as though I were odd. I sat down and opened the box.

  Wow. Whatever I was expecting to find, it wasn’t a stack of fifty-pound notes four inches thick. And next to that, a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

  “Jax. Thank you.” This meant escape for Georgie, no questions asked. It possibly meant college for Georgie, paid in cash.

  Underneath the money was a manila envelope, and beneath that the flash drive. I grabbed it, pulled out my computer, and jacked it in. The down-ticker appeared: 00:07.04. Sweet Jesus. Jesse reached for the manila envelope, asking permission to open it. I nodded.

  He split the seal and poured the contents on the table: a passport, several credit cards, legal documents.

  “Guardianship papers, medical authorization, power of attorney,” he said.

  On-screen Jax appeared, at this desk, eyes fierce with what I now understood to be a moth
er’s protectiveness and despair at the losses in her life.

  “If you’ve made it this far, you know,” she said. “I want you to get Georgia. Take her with you, take her far away, and guard her with your life.

  “All her papers are here. Birth certificate, guardianship, custody. And credit cards in her name. They’re clean; you can travel on them without any bells going off. And I’ve put your name on the passport as her father.”

  Exhausted and angry and frayed though I was, all at once I felt like an interloper. I was voyeur to a plea that crossed primal lines, a plea that Tim North, who ended lives for money, would act against predator instinct and protect another man’s child.

  “The security services and the government mustn’t know of her existence. If they ever connected her to me she’d become a pawn. They’d send her into foster care as a cover for keeping her under surveillance, to draw me out. That’s the last we’d see of her unless I gave myself up. So don’t let her get anywhere near the Met, Special Branch, any of them.”

  She paused, gazing off to the side as though gathering her thoughts.

  “And I’ve left an insurance policy for her. You’ll see the document there, signed, sealed, delivered. If you have to, that’s it.”

  Jesse found another envelope. He opened it and began reading.

  Still she hesitated. “Don’t hate me. I want you to understand why I did what I did, why it took me so long to tell you about Georgia. I thought you couldn’t handle it. But it’s time to let go of the blame and forgive the people who helped me.” She looked as though she were trying to hold back her emotions. “You were my everything. You and Georgie. Make her your own. Don’t let me down.”

  She typed for a few seconds on her computer keyboard.

  “I obtained the NSA satellite feed.” She looked back at the camera. “You were right; they kept it archived. Somebody wanted it under wraps. They were happy with the way things turned out and didn’t want competing narratives getting into circulation.” More typing. “But I can be very persuasive.”

  She hit one more key. “Video only, but you know the tune.”

  For a second I felt disoriented, unsure what we were seeing. Then my throat knotted.

  It was an overhead view from an NSA satellite. The resolution was incredible. It showed Hank Sanger’s house: rooftop, veranda, tropical garden; an alley beyond, more houses, and an apartment building beyond that, air-conditioning units on its roof casting blocky shadows.

  I gazed at Jesse, distraught. Watching Hank Sanger’s murder was bad enough the first time. I didn’t want to see these events again from a new angle, and I didn’t want him to see this footage at all.

  On the veranda Christian and Sanger appeared, small figures seen from overhead, shadows twice as long as their bodies. Christian was bopping around, animated, happy to be with his father. In the alley, a dog sniffed at a trash can. A flock of birds flew across the view, startlingly clear considering they were being filmed from outer space.

  Shadows stretched from trees and buildings as the sun angled toward the evening. Jesse leaned his elbows on the desk, staring at the screen.

  In the alley behind Sanger’s house a motor scooter darted past. The dog knocked over the trash can and began pawing through the garbage.

  Sanger was pulling on Christian’s arm, trying to get him to leave. Let’s go get something to eat, he was saying. Come on.

  Christian spread his arms. Can’t we stay here? He hated going out; he went out all the time.

  And God, now I knew why he hated it. Out all the time with men from his mother’s club. I studied the screen, trying to understand what we were waiting for.

  Jesse pointed. “Look.”

  Across the alley from Sanger’s house, on top of the apartment building, a door opened and a figure crept across the roof. Black hair gleaming in the evening sunlight. Rucksack on her back.

  “That’s . . .” I said.

  She crouched down next to the edge, unzipped her rucksack, and took out a big stubby gun, more than a pistol and less than an Uzi. Hunching below the rooftop ledge, she got her phone and made a call.

  I put a hand on my head. “Oh, my God.”

  She peeked across the street at Hank Sanger and his son. She hacked her hand through the air, seemingly arguing with the person she was calling. Made a gesture for two. One big, one small. Shook her head. Gestured again that a small one was across the street. She looked again across the alley, past the dog chewing the garbage, over the fence and garden, at Sanger and Christian talking in the sunset. She spoke into the phone, shaking her head.

  “It’s Shiver,” Jesse said.

  I didn’t speak, just stared at the screen. Shiver held still, and finally nodded. She was going to work. And I knew who she worked for.

  Putting the phone in her pocket, she tucked the stock of the gun into the crook of her arm and turned to set the barrel on the railing.

  On the veranda Hank turned sharply, no longer talking to Christian but looking inside. Christian froze.

  I felt piano wire running through my nerves. Dad was there.

  He edged into sight, gun aimed carefully at Sanger, looking around for danger, one hand out to Christian, trying to convince him to move away from his father.

  Sanger gave up his gun and pointed at Dad. Fucking Judas.

  Dad pointed back. Sit down and lace your hands behind your head.

  Shiver fired.

  We saw the muzzle flash. Hank Sanger’s head snapped sideways and he keeled to the veranda. Christian began screaming.

  Dad tackled him to the ground. Christian went wild, punching and clawing his way loose and scrabbling away from his father’s dead body.

  Dad tried to pull him back. Shouting. Down on the floor. You want to live, get down and put your hands on your head. Trying to keep him out of the line of fire while his eyes swept the garden and rooftops.

  Across the street Shiver cast a final glance at Sanger’s body and spun away from the railing. As she did, the barrel of her gun caught the dying sun.

  Dad swung his own gun toward the source of the light, gripped it with both hands, and fired. Christian clapped his hands to his ears, clawed to his feet, and ran screaming into the house. Shiver crouched low and skittered across the roof to the stairs.

  Christian burst out onto the bedroom veranda, clambered over the railing, and dropped to the lawn. He shot a glance back at the house, terrified that Dad was shooting at him, trying to kill the only witness to his slaughter. He raced across the grass, shadow flailing behind him. At the wall he leaped over and took off down the alley.

  I gazed, horrified, at the screen. You can’t believe everything you hear. Remember that, if everything else fails.

  I felt myself sinking, my vision tingling. Gradually I became aware that Jesse had pulled me against him, that his arms were tight around me, and that I was crying.

  I buried my head against his shoulder. “You knew none of this, did you?”

  “No. It’s . . .” His voice dropped. “Brutal. I’m sorry you had to see it.”

  I looked up at him. “Why did you come to London?”

  “Georgie.”

  “Dad knows she’s here?”

  “No. He knows that Jax enrolled her daughter in a boarding school run by the Salesian sisters. He didn’t know where. But when you were in Bangkok I overheard Jax mention London to you, and I put two and two together.”

  On my computer screen, the NSA satellite imagery ended. Jax reappeared.

  “As I said, I’m very persuasive.” A smile creased her mouth. “Petch Kongsangchai has never been able to turn me down, and he never will, no matter how much he claims to love selling dinosaur bones instead of playing spook. And Colonel Chittiburong is not one to forget things that are owed. What goes around comes around; that’s karma in a nutshell. He may be a monk now, but Niram knows who buttered his bread.”

  “My God,” I said.

  “Those names mean something to you?”

 
I nodded.

  Jax looked tired and emotional. “I can’t be certain why Rio had Hank killed. It may have been pure spite, for his relationship with me. Or it may have tied into the blackmail business. You never know who Rio will ally herself with, or for how long. But one thing you can be sure of—she nurtured Christian’s belief that Phil Delaney murdered his father and attempted to murder him as well, all to protect that slimy puta Jakarta Rivera. Christian has had a dozen years to feed that belief. His hatred will be awesome.”

  I glanced at Jesse. “There’s something else. Christian wants Georgie because she’s his half sister.”

  “Sister?” His eyebrows rose. Confusion crossed his face. “That’s what this is about?”

  He picked up the medical certificate I had found in the Aston. As a parking scam, it was cack. But it explained a whole lot.

  Myelodysplastic syndrome. A hematological condition characterized by severe anemia and frequent bleeding. Mr. Sanger should be considered to have a medical disability.

  Carefully Jesse said, “He’s not going to get her. He can’t.”

  On-screen, Jax had a weariness that seemed deeper than physical fatigue, as if she knew that whoever was watching this would have come to the end of the line, the end of the story, and that it wouldn’t be happy.

  “I’ve blown a lot of things in my life. Not just the Riverbend op. Was it worth it? Using Hank Sanger and Rio’s hookers to turn people to our advantage?” She let out a non laugh. “Why do you think I left the agency? I know you never forgave me, but sometimes a girl needs clarity. Simplicity is good. Getting things done is good. Even if it’s without congressional oversight.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, wanting to clear my eyes.

  “You didn’t approve; I know that. You objected to a lot of things over the past decade. As to why I didn’t tell you about Georgia for so long . . . did I truly need to destroy my marriage? I blew so many things in my life. I didn’t need that.”

  She looked as though she were trying to keep her composure. The slinky detachment was long gone.

  “It’s too late now; it was too late for us back then. We never would have made it. That’s why I didn’t tell you.